Turkana

The Turkana were an Eastern Nilotic people of the arid basin around Lake Turkana in north-western Kenya, where they lived as semi-nomadic camel and zebu cattle herders, calling themselves ŋiTurkana and their country Turkan.

They belonged to the Ateker cluster of related peoples and entered the basin from the north before breaking away in conflicts with their kin. By the 1600s they and their allies occupied the whole basin, organised in two great divisions, the Ngimonia and Ngichuuro.

Pushing east they met the Rendille and Boran, and the Samburu, whom they called the Kor; by the end of the eighteenth century demographic pressure and drought were driving them into the highland pastures held by the Siger. Diviners known as ngimurok guided a society that styled itself the people of the grey bull.